SOUTH KOREA
Lee talks up economy
President Lee Myung-bak used a national day radio address yesterday to bolster faith in Asia’s fourth-largest economy amid a global economic slowdown and sluggish factory output at home. Lee said that national debt at a third of GDP was well below the 98 percent average of other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nations, while foreign currency reserves exceeded US$300 billion and the nation’s current account was in surplus. “It would not be desirable for the nation to be overwhelmed by a crisis mentality,” Lee said.
TELECOMS
Moody’s downbeat on Nokia
A plan to provide 1 billion euros (US$1.33 billion) to Nokia Siemens Networks is negative for Nokia Oyj’s credit rating, Moody’s Investors Service said in its Weekly Credit Outlook report. Nokia and Siemens AG will each provide 500 million euros to their 50-50 joint venture, Nokia said in a statement on Thursday. “The capital injection, which we expected, is credit negative for Nokia as it reduces cash balances at the parent level, which are key to its rating,” Moody’s said. “The credit implications are much more pronounced for Nokia, whose liquidity is a key rating factor.”
BANKING
Wenzhou tightens credit
Wenzhou City Government in China has set a upper limit on the lending rates charged by private non-bank institutions as part of its efforts to control systemic risk in the banking sector, the government said in a statement on its Web site on Wednesday. Private non-bank institutions can only extend loans at an interest rate that does not exceed four times the benchmark lending rate, the statement said.
BANKING
Citigroup may be penalized
Citigroup Inc may be penalized by regulators in Japan for the third time since 2004 after its Japanese retail banking unit possibly breached rules by failing to fully explain product risk to customers, two people familiar with the situation said. The penalties imposed on Citigroup Japan’s retail banking division by the Financial Services Agency may include temporary suspensions of operations at some outlets, said the people, who declined to be identified as the discussion is private.
MINING
Nickel Asia suspends unit
Nickel Asia Corp, the Philippines’ largest nickel producer, said yesterday it suspended mining operations and nickel ore loading activities at its Taganito Mining Corp (TMC) unit following an attack by an armed group. Nickel Asia, partly owned by Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Mining Co Ltd, did not say when the mine at Claver in the Philippines’ Surigao del Norte province would reopen. “We understand that certain equipment of TMC, as well as our affiliate, Taganito HPAL Corporation, were burned,” the firm told the stock exchange.
MEDIA
Pittnam is CC Media CEO
On the heels of organizing a two-day concert in Las Vegas that kicked off Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio online radio service, media veteran Bob Pittman was named CEO of its parent company, CC Media Holdings Inc. An expert at boosting brands, Pittman is the former CEO of MTV Networks and was chief operating officer of America Online Inc. He joined the firm in November with a US$5 million investment and the job of chairman of media and entertainment platforms.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts